Kulindadromeus images

While I’m sure huge parts of the internet are currently going mad over the new ornithischian Kulindadromeus and the implications for fuzzy dinosaurs (or otherwise) there current crop of pictures available isn’t that great. Inevitably those in the paper are small and crammed into the limited space (in the main paper at least, I’ve not yet got hold of the supplementary files and am writing this before the paper is released) and the press images are focused on the beautiful life reconstructions. However, Pascal Godefroit was kind enough to pass onto me a pile of images that he said I could use. Many have made their way onto my Guardian piece on the subject, but even there they have to stay small to fit the website’s style and some of the detail is lacking, so I’ll put them up here instead.

Obviously these images come directly from Pascal and are copyright to him and his team and should not be reproduced without his direct permission. Anyway, they do show some nice details of various parts of these specimens and the different integumentary structures (both scales and filaments) rather well and I imagine will be of some interest. I won’t add any more description here since I’ve already written a couple of thousand words on this animal today and I suspect most readers will be angling for the paper to do their detailed reading anyway. Enjoy.

Multiple filaments associated with the femur

Multiple filaments associated with the humerus.

Small scales associated with the pes.

Small filaments associated with the skull.

Filaments at the proximal tibia.

Scales on the distal tibia.

Close up of tooth series.

Huge thanks to Pascal for lending me these images and letting me put them online and obviously my congratulations on the discovery.

Oh I agree it’s possible (and the paper does at least hint of this [don’t forget how limited their space is, they can’t go for too nuanced arguments]) but even if that’s the case, it still shows how ‘easy’ it might be for dinosaur to evolve filaments and thus that they might be more prevalent that currently recorded. I think no matter quite how you read this it rather hits strongly at the possibility of much more.

1stly, did Godefroit et al. compare Kulindadromeus’s filaments to those of Psittacosaurus or Tianyulong?

2ndly, correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t Godefroit et al. have had more space for nuanced arguments had they used something free (& thus, accessible to regular ppl like me) like PNAS?

This also reminds of why it’s hard to be an autistic dino fan: On the 1 hand, this is a super-cool discovery on many levels; I’m especially interested in the “raggedy scales” idea being brought back for non-bird reasons; On the other hand, this complicates things in terms of explaining dino integument to others; B-4, you could say that coelurasaurs were feathered (with tyrannosaurids becoming secondarily scaly), while non-coelurasaurs were scaly (with primitive ornithiscians having quill-like display structures); Now, I just don’t know.

Herman asks: “Wouldn’t Godefroit et al. have had more space for nuanced arguments had they used something free (& thus, accessible to regular ppl like me) like PNAS?”

Hell yeah.

My first thought when I heard about this was of course “this is awesome”.

My second was “Oh great, another astonishing specimen that’s going to get a wholly inadequate description squeezed into a quarter of a page in a glam mag with illustrations that look like they might contain Bigfoot”.

Come on people. If you have a feathered ornithischian, that is newsworthy. You don’t have to squeeze it into an objectively crappy journal to make it so.

Thanks Dave (and Pascal!), these are great photos. I guess the next paper on this subject will be from Feduccia and Co explaining these away as collagen fibres / plant material / bacterial traces / mineral intrusion / definitely not feathers.

I know this is off topic, but I am struggling to find any link to the new fossil remains of spinosaurus that sparked this new semi aquatic quadruped model. While certain statements such as closeable nostrils are also casting doubt as to how reliable the claim is. Due to references to paddle like feet. They also tated they compared Spinosaurus to other spinosaurids to help construct this model; when last I checked there is limited fossil evidence of the limb structure of these spinosaurids. So if it is possible could you perhaps link images of these new fossil remains.